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THIS IS MY BODY

This is My body

Several months ago, the Roman Catholic
Church in U.K.
issued a statement declaring that Roman Catholics are not to participate in
Protestant Lord’s Supper services and that Protestants should not be admitted
to Roman Catholic Mass. Though never verified, it was surmised that the
statement was issued in response to the fact that the Anglican British Prime
Minister, Tony Blair, whose wife, Cherie, is a Roman Catholic, frequently
attended Mass at a Roman Catholic church with his family when he is at home.
While many ecumenists will decry the statement as being a step back in the
world-wide effort to reunite Christendom, faithful Protestants ought rather to
welcome the declaration instead. Why so? Because, the Roman Catholic mass is
not only repugnant to Scripture but is the cause of manifold superstitions, yea
of gross idolatories (WCF29.6). It is therefore abominable in the eyes of God. As such, the
declaration, which distinguishes between the Roman and the biblical Lord’s
Supper is to be welcomed. However, it must be noted that though the gulf
between the Roman view of the Mass and what Protestants believe to be the
biblical Lord’s Supper is very wide, not all Protestants are agreed on what
exactly ought to be the correct biblical view pertaining to the Lord’s Supper.
What are the different views, what is the correct view? In this article we
shall attempt to answer these questions as we continue on the theme of the
marks of the true Church, of which the right administration of the sacrament is
one. And having laid the foundation, we shall discuss how the Supper ought to
be conducted and how we should received in our next article.

On the same night that the Lord Jesus was
betrayed, "He took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and
said, ‘Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in
remembrance of me.’ After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had
supped, saying, ‘This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft
as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as ye eat this bread, and
drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come." (1 Cor
11:23-26)

These are the words of the Apostle Paul
concerning the institution of the Lord’s Supper. It is today the passage which
is most frequently read by ministers administering the Lord’s Supper in all
denominations of churches. At first glance, it appears to be rather
straightforward and does not lend itself to controversies, but history has
shown otherwise. What is the point of contention? Inter-estingly, it is the
Lord’s words: "This is my body."

What does this phrase mean? The Roman
Catholic Church teaches that it is to be taken literally i.e. Jesus meant that
the bread used in the Lord’s Supper actually, supernaturally changes into His
flesh, and similarly that the wine becomes His blood. This is the doctrine
known asTransubstantiation. By this doctrine the Roman Catholic
church teaches that in the Mass, the bread and wine miraculously become the
actual flesh and blood of Christ and is offered up as a sacrifice to appease
the wrath of God. Thus Pope Pius IV made this ‘infallible’ declaration in the 5tharticle of his creed: "I profess
likewise that in the Mass there is offered to God a true, proper, and
propitiatory sacrifice—for the living and the dead. And that in the most holy
sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly, really and substantially the blood,
together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there
is made a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of
the whole substance of the wine into the blood, which conversion the Catholic
Church calleth Transubstantiation. I also confess that under either kind aloneChrist is received whole and entire, and a
true sacrament." Accordingly, the Council of Trent in 1562-3 declared
emphatically: "If any one shall say, that in the Mass there is not offered
to God a true and proper sacrifice, or that what is offered is nothing else
than Christ given to be eaten, let him be anathema" (§ 22.2.1); and the doctrine
was again affirmed in Vatican II (1962-5). …Cont. p. 3

Without going into a lot of details, it may
easily be seen that this doctrine is repugnant to Scripture, to morality, to
reason, and to our senses. It is contrary to Scripture since Christ pronounced
that his propitiatory sacrifice was finished on the Cross (Jn 19:30), and the
author of Hebrews repeatedly affirmed that the sacrifice was completed once for
all: "Oncein the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself" (Heb 9:26a); "Christ wasonceoffered to bear the sins of many; and unto
them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto
salvation" (Heb 9:28); "We are sanctified through the offering of the
body of Jesus Christoncefor
all. " (Heb 10:10); and "Byoneoffering he hath perfected for ever them
that are sanctified" (Heb 10:14). It is repugnant to morality since the
eating of the wafer in the mass would be cannibalism if the doctrine is true.
(Remember Wycliff’s illustration of the mouse eating the wafer?) It is
repugnant to reason since the physical body of Christ cannot be in heaven and
on earth at the same time. It is contrary to our senses because the bread and
wine still look and taste like wine without any alteration at all after the
blessing. We note that in the Bible, there is actually a case oftransubstantiation: when Jesus changed the water into wine
(Jn 2:1-11). Of course in that case the wine tasted like wine. The guests who
drank it even thought that it was the best wine they had tasted all evening.
Not so in the alleged transubstantiation of the Romanish Mass.

During the Reformation, Martin Luther
rejected this view and taught that instead of replacing the bread and the wine,
Christ’s presence is added to the bread and wine. He maintained that the body
and blood of Christ are somehow present in, under, and through the elements of
bread and wine. This view may be known asconsubstantiation. The process of consubstantiation may be
likened to how an iron bar becomes red-hot when it is placed in the fire. It is
still an iron bar, but it has the additional quality of being red hot.

While Luther’s view seems to make more
sense than the Roman Catholic view, it is clear that he insisted on the real
physical and substantial presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. He taught
that the divine attribute of omnipresence of Christ was somehow communicated to
the human nature of Jesus, making it possible for His body and blood to be
present at more than one place at the same time. Sometime after the Reformation
begun, Luther and the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli, persuaded by Philip of
Hesse, decided to meet to see if they could forge a union. The meeting was
convened at Marburg
in 1529. When the two Reformed groups met, they soon discovered that they
agreed on every point of doctrine except one—the Lord's Supper. Luther at the
onset insisted that he would not change his mind about the real presence of
Christ in the sacrament, and then to give his assertion a pictorial emphasis
wrote on the table with a piece of chalk, in large characters: "Hoc est
corpus Meum" (Latin: This is my body).

Zwingli and Oecolampadius (his lieutenant)
argued that Jesus’ words literally mean "ThisrepresentsMy body." Jesus frequently used the
verbto bein such a figurative sense. He said,
"I am the door," "I am the true vine," etc. So Zwingli
argued that Christ’s body is not present in actual substance at the Lord’s
Supper. The supper is amemorialonly, with Christ’s presence no different from His normal presence
through the Holy Spirit. Luther was adamant. He insisted thatHoc est corpus Meummeans that the bread of the sacramentisthe body of Christ. He would not allow the verbest(is) to be taken in a figurative or representative sense. When
Oecolampadius quoted John 6:63, "the flesh profiteth nothing" to show
that bodily eating is useless if we have spiritual eating, Luther retorted with
"If God should order me to eat crab-apples or dung, I would do it, being
assured that it would be salutary." Luther’s profession of absoluteobedience is commendable, but it is tragic
that he could be so blind to the fallacy of his arguments. So convinced was he
of his position, that he eventually pronounced Zwingli as being of a different
spirit, and would not have anything else to do with the Swiss Reformers.

Whatever we may think of Luther’s
obstinacy, however, his objections against Zwingli’s purely commemorative view
is not entirely without biblical and theological basis, if we care to study
deeper into the issue. For example, Paul speaks of the Lord’s Supper as a
"communion (1 Cor 10:16); and he insists that those who "eateth and
drinketh unworthily," brings judgement on themselves, including physical
illness and death (1 Cor 11:29-30). Such statements, surely, militate…P.T.Oagainst a purely commemorative view. It is not surprising,
therefore, that towards the end of his life, when he read John Calvin’s tract
on the Lord’s Supper, he remarked approvingly: "The author is certainly a
learned and pious man: if Zwingli and Oecolampadius had from the start declared
themselves in this way, there would probably not have arisen such a
controversy."

Calvin, whose view we essentially subscribe
to, denied the "substantial" presence of Christ at the Lord’s Supper
when he debated with Rome or the Lutherans. Yet when he debated with the
Anabaptists, who, like Zwingli reduced the Lord’s Supper to a mere memorial, he
insisted on the "substantial" presence of Christ.

On the surface it seems that Calvin was
caught in a blatant contradiction. However, upon closer scrutiny we see that
Calvin used the termsubstantialin two different ways. When he addressed
Catholics and Lutherans, he used the termsubstantialto mean "physical." He denied the physical presence of
Christ in the Lord’s Supper. When he addressed the Anabaptists, however, he
used the termsubstantialin the sense of "real." Calvin
thus argued that Christ wasreallyortrulypresent
in the Lord’s Supper, though not in a physical sense. The human nature of Jesus
is presently localised in heaven. It remains in perfect union with His divine
nature. Though the human nature is contained in one place, thepersonof Christ is not so contained because His
divine nature (which is hypostatically united to His human nature) still has
the power of omnipresence. Jesus said, "I am with you always, even to the
end of the age" (Matt 28:20).

Calvin taught that though Christ’s body and
blood remain in heaven, they are spiritually "made present" to us by
Jesus’ omnipresent divine nature. Wherever the divine nature of Christ is
present, He is truly present (ICR4.17.30). This is consistent with Jesus’ own teaching that He was
"going away" yet would abide with us. When we, by faith, meet Him at
the Lord’s Supper we commune with Him as thetheoanthropos, the God-Man.
Note that this communion occurs not because Christ is brought down to us
(transubstantiation or consubstantiation), but because we are lifted up to Him
(seeICR4.17.31). By meeting us in His divine presence, we are brought into
His human presence mystically, because His divine nature is never separated
from His human nature. When the Lord’s Supper is participated in faith, the
divine nature of Christ brings us into communion with the ascended Christ. This
is how we are to understand 1Cor 10:16. The Lord’s Supper is a mystical
communion with Christ in which "from the substance of His flesh Christ
breathes life into our souls—indeed, pours forth His very life unto us—even
though Christ’s flesh itself does not enter into us" (ICR4.17.32). Is eating the flesh of Christ and
drinking His blood the same as believing in Him? Calvin denies (SeeComm. on John, 260). How then is it possible that the
flesh and blood of Christ can feed the soul? This is a mystery that even Calvin
finds to be "too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to
declare" (ICR4.17.32).
But the Lord has declared, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and
drink his blood, ye have no life in you" (Jn 6:53). Although Calvin
believes that the Lord’s sermon in John 6 is not an exposition of the Lord’s
Supper which was to be instituted later, he suggests that "Christ …
intended that the holy Supper should be, as it were, a seal and confirmation of
this sermon" (John, 266). Herein is the difference between the
Calvinistic view of the Lord’s Supper which the Reformed Church has accepted
and the Zwinglian memorial view. And herein is the reason why we must discern
the Lord’s body in the Supper or be in danger of eating and drinking damnation
on ourselves (cf. 1Cor 11:29). Calvin explains that the Lord’s Supper, which is
spiritual food for those who partake it by faith, "[turns] into a deadly
poison for all those whose faith it does not nourish and strengthen, and whom
it does not arouse to thanksgiving and to love" (ICR4.17.40).

Herein also is the answer to the question
on the value of the Lord Supper as a means of grace. The Westminster Assembly,
which perhaps for didactic and prudential reasons did not reflect the
particular details of Calvin’s view, explains that "they that worthily
communicate in the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, do therein feed upon the
body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal and carnal, but in a spiritual
manner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto
themselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death" (WLC170).
This is true, yet incomplete from Calvin’s perspective, since the general
application of Christ crucified and the benefits of His death, may be achieved
without the Lord’s Supper and appears to leave out the secret but immediate
feeding of our souls which is implied in Calvin’s thought. On the other hand,
the Heidelberg Catechism which follows Calvin’s view closely answers in, Q. 76,
"What is it then to eat the crucified body, and drink the shed blood of
Christ?"

It is not only to embrace with a believing
heart all the sufferings and death of Christ, and thereby to obtain the pardon
of sin, and life eternal; but also, besides that, to become more and more
united to His sacred body, by the Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in
us; so that we, though Christ is in heaven and we on earth, are notwithstanding
"Flesh of His flesh, and bone of his bone"; and that we live, and are
governed forever by one spirit, as members of the same body by one soul.

Note that while Calvin speaks about the
agency of the divine nature of Christ, the catechism speaks about the agency
the Holy Spirit. Theologically there is no difference, since they are one in
essence. This answer is based largely on the Lord’s sermon in John 6, and
teaches us that the unique benefit of the Lord’s Supper is the increase of
unity that we have with Christ. This translates in our experience to growth in
Christ-likeness, increase of love for Christ, increase of fidelity to Him, and
increase of assurance of our being in Him.

Thus, if Calvin is right,—and most Reformed
theologians, including the Westminster divines would not impute error to him,
though many find his presentation too speculative,—then the Lord’s Supper
becomes not an option, but a vital means of grace which must not be neglected
in the church or by the individual believer. Moreover, when we contemplate on
the real presence of Christ in the Supper, we are convinced that the supper may
no more be conducted in a flippant, hasty and mechanical manner without proper
exhortations to reflect on what Christ has done for us and to examine our
hearts before Him.